My brother called me yesterday to wish me a happy birthday (60th).
I mentioned to him that I was spending nearly every minute in bed
because of some chronic lung problems, which I then shared with
him. He responded that he would pray for me.

Being too debilitated to argue effectively with him, I simply
responded "I appreciate the thought."

He then felt a bit uneasy about my lack of adequate rebuttal, and
felt prompted to reinforce his belief in prayer with a story about
one of his sons, Vance, who is nearly 35 years old. Vance went
back to school recently, and was trying to get into a Ph.D. program
that he wanted very badly. Given his age, he feels a certain amount
of pressure to get on with it, so he can get on with the rest of his
life. He was called into his faculty advisor's office and informed
that he had missed the last available slot in that program by a blond
hair.

My brother asked him if he had prayed about it, and he replied "oh,
Dad, the Lord isn't going to gigger somebody else's life around just
so I can get into a grad program."

His father replied, "you don't know what god is willing to do. I
suggest you pray and see what happens."

I'll be you know the ending of the story. One of the accepted
candidates had to drop out at the last moment, and Vance was the
next in line. He is now in the program.

I got to thinking about that, I it occurred to me that my brother's
god had fucked up somebody else's plans, just because Vance had groveled
and begged that he really, really wanted that program. I wondered who
else's lives were fucked up just so Vance's prayers could get a 'yes'
reply. Perhaps the other candidate's mother died and that's why he
dropped out. Perhaps he ran out of money and had to drop out for that
reason. I find it hard to think of any positive reason why the other
fellow would have dropped out of the program, since he really, really
wanted into it, too, or else he wouldn't have gone through all the
hoops necessary to get selected.

Strange god, that Jehovah.

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